(September 12, 2016 at 10:59 am)Whateverist Wrote: I'm with you in being interested in the mind.  But I'm not interested in it as an amusement park to be played in.  I'm just curious to know its nature.  So I'm not interested in 'disciplining' the mind so that 'I' can do stuff with it.  I'm more interested in the mind phenomenologically.  So when it comes to dreams, I find the actual details the interesting part .. not flying around in them like Ironman.  It is very hard to understand the mind/self without influencing/distorting what it is you think you're studying at the same time.

That's like saying it's hard to understand your house without ever opening the door and stepping out into the bigger world.  Why take that position?  Why limit what wondrous things you might experience by convincing yourself that everything that matters is already right there with you in your little box?

I can't get how an understanding of the physical world has led people to be so disinterested in embracing a broader experience.

I also can't understand why half a dozen people have come to this thread to tell me they have no interest, or see no value,  in what I wanted it to be about.  It saddens me-- it's almost like an interest in the mind and its potential to experience is equivalent here to religious fuckery.

Does nobody here have mental experiences, or processes involving how they experience, that they take value in?

Not sure what you just said but I think you misunderstood me. I was mostly agreeing with you that the interior is an interesting thing. In what way do you think I'm limiting myself?

(September 12, 2016 at 12:21 pm)Whateverist Wrote: Not sure what you just said but I think you misunderstood me.  I was mostly agreeing with you that the interior is an interesting thing.  In what way do you think I'm limiting myself?

If I read you wrong, I apologize.  Can I buy you a beer?

(September 12, 2016 at 10:50 am)bennyboy Wrote: So I'm back to my original request: is there anyone there who has a sincere interest in studying what it's like to be themselves, and how different thoughts and processes affect them?  Is there anyone who has picked up neat little tricks they can do with their minds?

All right you want a trick? Just breathe out "thank you" with your eyes closed. Not addressed in any direction to anyone for anything at all. Just the pure expression of gratitude.

What it does for me: Brings the mind out of any spiral of self pity or circular complaint, and fills my heart with positive emotion. I've also gotten to the point where it can drop me right out of monkey mind monologuing and into the pure experience of the moment coupled with a small joyous sound in my soul. Gratitude can go a very very long way.

What a wonder when it's no longer just a reaction external stimulus and becomes a self generated quality.

The idea is not to get crazy manic happy, the goal is to smooth out the ruffles and irritations that lodge in our minds from both within us and the external world. The goal is peaceful equanimity with all things. Not up, not down, through.

Yes, absolutely, there's tremendous value in the different kinds of experiences you mention, for example, meditation. Some of the most illuminating experiences that I have had in terms of understanding myself, and the reality that the mind is so fluid, flexible, and fragile, have involved tweaking its chemistry via hallucinogenics or a drug like ecstasy. Nothing that I could have gleaned from a purely 'materialistic' or 'mechanistic' explanation could have conveyed the drastic alteration that feeling unified with your surroundings, or other minds--as though the self were dissolving into nothingness, sometimes to my great horror while at other times to my utter elation--actually entails, as a mind, rather than as a mind simply apprehending someone else's experiences, in the abstract.

Having an open mind does not mean that one's mind is open to every sort of non-realistic nonsense that people are prone to perpetuate for reasons that do not include reason to any degree.

(September 17, 2016 at 12:33 am)Maelstrom Wrote: Having an open mind does not mean that one's mind is open to every sort of non-realistic nonsense that people are prone to perpetuate for reasons that do not include reason to any degree.

Having an open mind is good, but having a mind that can retain things and manipulate thoughts like objects is better.

Having a mind that can create new thoughts is best.

When I smoke a ton of weed I feel like im expanding the powers of my mind but I'm probably just making myself dumber.

(September 17, 2016 at 2:14 am)Aegon Wrote: When I smoke a ton of weed I feel like im expanding the powers of my mind but I'm probably just making myself dumber.

It's one thing to go on a trip.  It's another to bring something useful back, right?

I know a lot of guys who thought they discovered some deep truth while stoned, and that they'd managed to write some of it down in a notebook.  More often than not, they had something like, "The universe is an egg!  That's the key!" or whatever.

On the other hand, I know a lot of artists and musicians who used drugs to shake up their minds and keep getting new angles at which to look at things.  I mean. . . name a really great rock band whose members never did drugs, right?

I think I'm going to try lucid dreaming tonight using the waking-dream-check technique. In this technique, you tell yourself several times during the day, "Am I dreaming? Why. . . yes I am!" They say if you can do this in a dream, you have a pretty good chance of realizing you ARE in fact dreaming, and taking control.

When I really get into it, I can usually have at least a short lucid dream within a few days. I'll let you guys know if I have any luck.